Sermon: “Original Sin”[1]

Text: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7

1^st Sunday in Lent (A)

February 10, 2008

Scripture introduction.  Our next reading is the familiar story of how Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and bad.  Even people who know little else about the Bible have heard the outlines of the story.  And it’s an important story for theologians, who have used it in their attempts to understand the origin of evil, the true nature of human beings, and the relationship between sin and death.  For example, the passage from Romans that Murray Pate just read (Romans 5:12-19) is the Apostle Paul’s interpretation of the story.  Others in a long line of theologians have had their own insights—giants like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther.  In fact, the story has born the weight of so many theological arguments that we may be surprised, as we visit it afresh, at how simple it really is.

We’ll only be reading a portion of the story, but before I do, let me point out just a few things.  (1) In Hebrew, the word Adam means “human being” or even collectively “humankind.”  It also has associations with the word “ground” or “earth,” so we might even translate, “the earthling.”  (2) Nowhere in Genesis is the snake of this story identified with Satan.  The snake is not a horrible dragon or sea serpent, but only a snake, although as Genesis tells us, the cleverest of all the wild animals.  (3) When the snake is tempting Eve, it is clear from the Hebrew grammar that he is addressing more than one person.[2]  Therefore, Adam must have been within earshot—participating in the conversation, albeit passively.  And finally, (4) this story never uses the words “fall” or “sin” or the term “original sin.” 

Sermon.  Lent traditionally is a time when we conduct an examination of our lives—trying to discover, and to acknowledge, the ways that we are falling short as disciples of Jesus, and then doing our best to root out those sins and to amend our lives.  So we are not surprised to find in the lectionary for the First Sunday in Lent a reading from Genesis that has been for centuries a guide to understanding how sin came into the world and came to have such an effect on the human race. 

From time to time I have the opportunity to teach about our Reformed heritage as Presbyterians.  When I do, I always attempt to emphasize how much we have in common with other traditions of Christianity.  I firmly believe that what we have in common is much more important than the things on which we differ.  Often, you respond by saying, “OK. We get that.  But what makes Presbyterians different?”  Well, one thing that makes us different is how much we focus on sin.  Of course all denominations understand that sin is bad and should be avoided, but Presbyterians affirm that sin is a powerful force in the world and cannot be lightly regarded nor ever overcome in this life.  This is an emphasis that runs counter to our culture.  Historians among you may dispute this, but it seems to me that ever since the Age of Enlightenment—say, roughly, since the 1700s—European and American thinkers have been pretty optimistic about the ability of the human race, through reason and science, to overcome the problems of the world.  Throughout my younger days, the tone of the filmstrips and the Weekly Reader articles we encountered in school was that we were well on the way to solving the major problems that confronted us.  Just a little more time, just a few more key discoveries, and we would be there.  Hunger would be eliminated as mechanized farming methods and hybrid seeds took over.  Nuclear power would provide unlimited energy without smog.  One by one, the major diseases that plagued humankind would be conquered by modern medicine.  And if we could only get the Russians to behave, the United Nations would be the forum in which world peace would finally become a reality. 

This basic optimism is one of the enduringly attractive things about Americans: we have a “can do” attitude that often helps us overcome obstacles.  If we are honest, however, I think we have to admit that making the world a better place is a lot harder than the Weekly Reader articles might have suggested.  We can’t even seem to eliminate hunger in our own country, let alone in other parts of the world.  Nuclear power comes with its own environmental dangers.  Modern medicine has had success against certain diseases; but many Americans, because they cannot afford good medical care, remain sick.  And have you noticed that we still have wars and conflicts almost 20 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union?

More and more, I think, we are recognizing that our biggest problems are not external (like diseases) but are caused by failed systems and by people hurting one another.  I have been most disheartened recently by the events in the African nation of Kenya.  This is a country that has modeled growing democracy and peaceful, stable economic development.  Two months ago, if you were going to highlight an African country to emulate, Kenya would have been on your short list.  Now, as a result of a contested national election just after Christmas, the rival factions are engaged in shocking violence against one another.  The conflict is now between tribes, and murderous bands escalate their cycles of retaliation.  A group of innocent persons seeking refuge in a church building were burned alive.  Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is attempting to broker a solution, but the violence continues at this moment.  And we in the United States needn’t feel self-satisfied; we have our own problems.  I’m personally familiar with racial strife in the American South.  We’ve become accustomed to stories about discrimination there.  However, I was surprised to read just this week about many towns in Illinois and Indiana that publicly advertised until only a few years ago that a black person had better not be found in the town after sundown.[3]  How many Kenyas, Rwandas, Darfurs, Kosovos, Selmas, and “sundown towns” does it take before we recognize that we humans have a tendency to misbehave and to hurt one another?

Why do we do this?  Why, when we look inside our own souls do we see things that we wish were not there?  We do have knowledge of what is good and bad.  But to paraphrase Paul, why do we not seem able to do what we know is right, and why do we do what we know is wrong?[4]  Are we essentially bad?  If not, then why does evil seem so prevalent in the world?  Many Christian theologians have sought answers in the Garden story told in Genesis. 

According to fairly common interpretations, Adam and Eve were created in God’s image.  They had the capacity to decide to act rightly or wrongly, to sin or not to sin.  When they disobeyed God, they badly marred God’s image in themselves.  By misusing God’s gift of free will, they distorted that image.  That image was still there, but only weakly visible.  What’s more, human free will itself became distorted, such that humans could no longer make choices that were completely good.  This inability to make choices that were purely good has been called “original sin” or in some traditions “inherited sin.”  We all commit particular sins, and we know what they are, but original sin refers to our sinfulness, which is both universal and unavoidable.  As this interpretation goes, human free will is still affirmed, in the sense that we are making our own choices; it’s just that our actions, even our best ones, are infected with sin and self-interest.

To continue with some of the history of this interpretation, through the centuries theologians have wondered how it is that original sin or inherited sin gets passed down from generation to generation.  The most common explanation was that it was passed down biologically from parents to children, just like other inherited characteristics.  Since Adam and Eve by disobedience marred the image of God in themselves, this same distortion was passed down to their children, and to theirs, and so on down to the present.  This biological theory of original sin is elegant, but I have trouble accepting it.[5] 

What I want to suggest this morning is that we hold all this theology in the back of our minds temporarily while we go back and read the Garden story in its simplicity.  Personally, I do not consider the story to be about two actual humans.  Rather, they are literary characters who represent the human race.  I think the story itself tells us this by the names it gives the two characters—Adam, the human being, the earthly being, and Eve, the life-giver, the primeval mother.  But even if you believe the story is about two actual humans, you can still think of Adam and Eve as representative characters, just as Paul did in his interpretation in Romans.[6]  As I read the story, it is designed to explain the origin of certain things, to answer questions like, “Why do we have to work so hard?”, “Why do women have such pain in childbirth while for other animals it seems so painless?”, and “Why is it that humans cannot see God and do not talk to God as they talk to one another?”  I don’t think the original purpose of the story was to explain the existence of sin and evil in the world.  The word “sin” is not used in the story.[7]  Even if we think of Adam and Eve as committing the first sin and allowing evil into the human race, that does not explain where evil comes from.  Where did the snake get the snake’s evil plans?  The Bible does not tell us.  Evil remains a mystery.  What the story does tell us is that humans by their actions are responsible for their separation from God.  God is holy and to be obeyed, but we disobey.  The result is separation.  When we make choices that are opposed to God’s plans for us, we put up barriers between us and God.   Those barriers make it harder for us to hear God’s voice, and so we begin a cycle in which it is easier and easier to make wrong choices.  In Genesis the Garden story is followed by a succession of stories in which humans make increasingly bad decisions.

We do not have to believe in a biologically transmitted explanation of original sin in order to affirm that, however they came into the world, sin and evil seem to have the upper hand—at least for now.  Sin is transmitted by culture, and it does not take long for humans who grow up in the systems of a culture to acquire sinful ways and to become participants in the sinful systems.  Racism is a good example, which does not have to be taught directly, as it once was in the American South, in order to be learned from the culture.  Original sin is “original” in the sense that it is a part of our origin and of the formation of our characters.  Left to our own devices, there is no way that we ever will be able to eradicate sin.

We did not read the end of the Garden story this morning, but you might want to do that on your own.  What you will discover is that, although Adam and Eve by their actions separated themselves from God, God did not abandon them.  With the knowledge of bad and good, the unhappy couple discover the shame of their own nakedness[8] and attempt to cover themselves with fig leaves.  As they leave the Garden, God personally makes better clothes for them from animal skins.  And God does not desert them once they are outside the Garden.

And so it is that the Garden story tells us not only of how we have separated ourselves from God, but also of how God takes the initiative, nevertheless, to care for us and to go with us on our journey through the world of good and bad.  As humans built up more and more barriers by our wrong decisions, and went further and further astray, God took action by giving us laws to teach us how to behave.  Finally, when even the law failed to cure our wanderings, God came physically into our world in the person of Jesus Christ.  As Paul wrote, Jesus was the new Adam, the one who made the right decisions, the unselfish decisions, the one who leads us back into paths of righteousness.  Through the mystery of his atonement for all the wrongdoing of the ages, we believe that sin is no longer assured of the victory.  We believe that through faith in Christ we have begun the process of healing from the wounds of sin.  While we cannot be free from sin in this life,[9] every now and then we have our own small victories over sin, and they are a foretaste of the final victory that Christ has already won for us and that one day will be ours.  Original sin may be original, it may be universal, it may be powerful, but it will not be final.  “Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[10]